That Cruelty Which Yet is Love
by Ryaninthesky
Summary: The Victorian Lesbian Vampire Erotica you never knew you always wanted. Traveler Emma Swan finds a mysterious, and beautiful, stranger haunting her dreams and her bed.


A/N: This is cribbed heavily from Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 lesbian vampire story _Carmilla_, which is available for free on the internet, is awesome, and everyone should read. It was one of the first English vampire stories and heavily influenced _Dracula_. Plus, I mean, lesbians vampire. Do you need another reason? Think of this story as a mash-up. Many of the words are my own, but the dialogue is often lifted with only a few alterations from _Carmilla_, just because it's so good I had to use it. Also, the language and depictions of sex are mostly period-accurate. Please let me know what you think, this is a bit experimental and reviews are my crack.

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In 1872, a full twenty-five years before the accomplished Mr. Bram Stoker would write _Dracula_, Sheridan Le Fanu published the licentious and boldly titillating account of one Dr. Hesselius, under the title _Carmilla_. As many readers may well remember, this publication soon cause quite a stir, with several well-considered experts opining that the entire thing was, in fact, a complete hoax, and designed to appeal only to the most prurient of rouges.

This question was deeply impressed upon my mind, dear readers, and, as I was then as desirous of adventure as any other young person, I took it upon myself to see whether there was any truth to this exotic tale. What follows is my own story, received from the very mouths of the participants in this extraordinary account, with not a word omitted or altered. I can only hope that my complete candor in this matter will serve as a warning to the good parents of this country, and impress upon our youth the importance of not allowing themselves, by promises of pleasure or diversion, to be lured down the path of the Devil.

Ms. Emma Swan was then a woman of twenty-eight, no longer in the first blush of youth but somehow all the more handsome for it. Her father had been rather eccentric, and owing to the absence of any close family had left his entire fortune to his daughter upon his death. She in turn had completely abandoned the land of her birth, choosing instead to travel quite extensively on the Continent, walking the ancient paths of the nymphs in Italy, perhaps, or paying service to the spirit of the Maid of Orleans. Just now, she had quite abandoned the scriptures of the good Baedeker and was indulging in a life-long interest in the fairy-tales of the Grimm brothers. To this end she had taken up residence near one of those picturesque little villages that dot the German countryside, nestled in the gentle arms of the surrounding woods as if nothing had changed since the time of Caesar. Ms. Swan herself resided in a castle, several miles from the village. In that part of the country the smallest income may indeed be enough to afford a castle and servants, though in Britain it would have been scanty enough, and would indeed have not answered among the wealthy among us.

Perhaps there indeed is a reason that such as small sum will fetch a castle in that land, for it is often the case that the natives avoid them with such a fierceness of will that the stoutest among them will never visit even the grounds of these ancient abodes, owing to their natural superstitious nature. In this case, at least, Ms. Swan would have done well to heed their warnings.

A fortnight had scarcely passed before Emma began having dreams of the most peculiar nature. Dreams come through stone walls, light up dark rooms, or darken light ones, and their persons make their exits and their entrances as they please, and laugh at locksmiths. Upon waking, she would never have the faintest idea of the contents of her nightly travails. Some nights she slept profoundly; but still every morning she felt the same lassitude, and a languor weighed upon her all day. She felt herself a changed woman. A strange melancholy was stealing over her, a melancholy that she would not have interrupted. Dim thoughts of death began to open, and an idea that she was slowly sinking took gentle, and, somehow, not unwelcome possession of her. If it was sad, the tone of mind which this induced was also sweet. Whatever it might be, her soul acquiesced in it.

On one of these heady nights, when the moon was round and full and hung low in the sky over the woods, Emma awoke suddenly, her body reacting naturally to a stimulus that her conscious mind did not – or perhaps could not – understand. There is still something of the animal in us, after all, the primitive that recognizes danger in the prickling shiver of our skin, and in that moment between sleep and wakening it called to her. It is perhaps to our discredit that the trappings of civilization have created such distance from our primitive nature, so much that we hardly recognize it, for it would have in this case saved Emma from the events to come.

Soon it came to Emma that she was no longer alone in her bedroom. Indeed, her immediate thought was that this was simply another dream, for she locked her door at night as a matter of course, and was in possession of the only key. Comforted by this explanation, she relaxed into her bed sheets, and regarded the apparition in front of her with open curiosity.

Half-hidden by shadows, the woman gazed wonderingly at Emma in her turn. How shall I describe her to you, dear readers? She was not English; her skin, clearly flushed by the sun of the warmer climes, had ripened her beauty to an extent that is not seen in those of more phlegmatic races. An exquisitely shaped head graced a neck and shoulders as pure and smooth as marble, a nose of perfect form, and two ruby pouting lips that seemed made to be kissed. The smallness of her waist contrasted perfectly with the wideness of hips and ravishing fullness of bosom, the firmness of which rendered stays entirely unnecessary; a fact that was evident on watching the rise and fall of those two lovely globes, their form being perfectly defined even to the nipples, beneath her well-fitting dress. Her liquid eyes, nearly hidden under drooping lashes, were suffused with a humidity that was perfectly maddening, and the expression of every feature of her lovely face and palpitating form spoke of a warmth of temperament and lascivious abandon that would have tempted an anchorite.

The woman seemed to shake herself and moved forward a step, offering not an introduction to Emma's silence but instead recounting a story in a lilting, accented voice.

"I must tell you my vision about you; it is so very strange that you and I should have had, each of the other so vivid a dream, that each should have seen, I you and you me, looking as we do now, when of course we both were mere children. I was a child, about six years old, and I awoke from a confused and troubled dream, and found myself in a room, unlike my nursery, wainscoted clumsily in some dark wood, and with cupboards and bedsteads, and chairs, and benches placed about it. The beds were, I thought, all empty, and the room itself without anyone but myself in it; and I, after looking about me for some time, and admiring especially an iron candlestick with two branches, which I should certainly know again, crept under one of the beds to reach the window; but as I got from under the bed, I heard someone crying; and looking up, while I was still upon my knees, I saw _you_—most assuredly you—as I see you now; a beautiful woman, with golden hair and large green eyes, and lips— your lips—you as you are here. Your looks won me; I climbed on the bed and put my arms about you, and I think we both fell asleep. I was aroused by a scream; you were sitting up screaming. I was frightened, and slipped down upon the ground, and, it seemed to me, lost consciousness for a moment; and when I came to myself, I was again in my nursery at home. Your face I have never forgotten since. I could not be misled by mere resemblance. You _are_ the lady whom I saw then."

It was now Emma's turn to relate her corresponding vision, which she did, to the undisguised wonder of her acquaintance.

"I don't know which should be most afraid of the other," she said, again smiling—"If you were less pretty I think I should be very much afraid of you, but being as you are, I feel only that I have made your acquaintance some years ago, and have already a right to your intimacy; at all events it does seem as if we were destined, from our earliest childhood, to be friends. I wonder whether you feel as strangely drawn towards me as I do to you; I have never had a friend—shall I find one now?" She sighed, and her fine dark eyes gazed passionately on Emma.

Now the truth is, Emma felt rather unaccountably towards the beautiful stranger. She did feel, as she said, "drawn towards her," but there was also something of repulsion. In this ambiguous feeling, however, the sense of attraction immensely prevailed. She interested and won Emma; she was so beautiful and so indescribably engaging.

Emma attempted to engage her visitor in conversation, and to ascertain whether or not she was truly in a dream, although she did not feel the fear she had initially and surmised that she must be. However, the woman showed a singular reserve. Of herself, Emma learned only three things.

First—Her name was Regina.

Second—Her family was very ancient and noble.

Third—Her home lay in the direction of the west.

Regina then noticed that Emma was becoming agitated, owing to her refusal to disclose any information beyond these three vague statements. She placed her pretty arms about Emma's neck, draw the blonde to her, and laying her cheek against the fine pale skin, murmured with her lips near Emma's ear, "Dearest, your little heart is wounded; think me not cruel because I obey the irresistible law of my strength and weakness; if your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours. In the rapture of my enormous humiliation I live in your warm life, and you shall die—die, sweetly die—into mine. I cannot help it; as I draw near to you, you, in your turn, will draw near to others, and learn the rapture of that cruelty, which yet is love; so, for a while, seek to know no more of me and mine, but trust me with all your loving spirit."

And when she had spoken such a rhapsody, she pressed Emma more closely in her trembling embrace, and her lips in soft kisses gently upon her cheek.

"You will think me cruel, very selfish, but love is always selfish; the more ardent the more selfish. How jealous I am you cannot know. You must come with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me, and still come with me, and hating me through death and after. There is no such word as indifference in my apathetic nature."

Speaking thus, she gently moved her fluttering hands to the hem of Emma's night dress, pulling the clothes from her. Though Emma felt some elusive, immaterial idea of dread, the thought was soon pushed from her mind by the sorcery of the darker woman, whose eyes now glowed with an inhuman light. She soon revealed her own figure and knelt next to Emma once again, gazing ardently at her cunt.

"How wet you are for me, dearest."

The lovely stranger placed her fingers within it and rubbed them about in the moisture, and then substituted her tongue, sucking luxuriously the lips and clitoris, and thrusting in the velvet tip as far as it would go into the vagina, until Emma murmured. "It is coming, Regina. Oh! Oh! Suck harder!"

Emma, becoming bolder under her lover's ministrations, herself sought Regina's cunt, and inserting a finger, commenced pushing it backwards and forwards as she embraced her lovely buttocks with her disengaged arm. The tribades writhed like two serpents, their bodies arched, and then they fell prone on each other, every muscle vibrating as they spent in all the agonies of lasciviousness. Soon Emma overcame the languor brought on by these blissful convulsions, and took Regina across her knees, rubbing her belly and sucking her nipples, ever and anon allowing hand to wander between her thighs. She then turned with her belly downwards, so that their clitorises were in contact, and again passing her hand between Regina's thighs, she rubbed the profuse spendings with which their cunts overflowed and pressed her fingers into the willing woman's cunt, and proceeded to frig her with an unexpected ferocity.

They swayed to and fro, and pressed each other with their utmost strength, until it was evident they were spending again. Twisting on the ruined bed sheets, they embraced madly, thrusting their tongues into each other's mouths, and even biting each other in the fury of their transports, until another emission relieved their feverish lubricity. Presently, Regina brought her lips to the column of Emma's neck, and began to suck and bite at its surface, as if struggling to drink the divine essence that coursed just out of reach. Emma, coming back to herself for a moment, brought her hands up in a vain attempt to dislodge her lover, but the other woman seemed to draw upon a strength that rendered her efforts completely ineffectual. Emma could feel herself overcome with a gentle laziness, a peace which washed over her like waves upon the sand. Twin pricks, like needles, pierced her flesh, but she could no longer respond to the warning of danger.

After a moment, Regina drew away from her lover.

"Are you are afraid to die?"

"Yes, every one is."

"But to die as lovers may-to die together, so that they may live together. Is this not the true beauty of life, dear? We are already bonded together forever by fate; let us also be bound by love, and by blood. Say yes, my darling, and stay with me forever."

Emma gazed reverently into the luminous black eyes so unlike her own and considered the dark woman's proposal. For what is life, indeed, but a series of beginnings? May not the soul continue into the afterlife, and be born again, perhaps, as they say in the East, into different bodies according to the will of fate? The larvae must, in its course, become the butterfly.

"Yes, yes, I give you my love-a cruel love-strange love, that will take my life. Love will have its sacrifices. No sacrifice without blood."

"Darling, darling," Regina murmured, "I live in you; and you would die for me, I love you so."

She lowered her head and drank deeply of the sanguine fluid, taking her lover's emissions greedily between her curved lips until Emma lay motionless on the bed, her alabaster skin as cold as the stone itself.


End file.
